Poems & Stories
One of my dearest friends, Shawne Marie Clifford, committed suicide in 1991. She’d been pleading with me to come and stay with her in Florida—-I had taken her up on a similar offer previously when she lived in South Carolina. But I was unable to drop everything at that particular time. She sent me a letter telling me that she’d had a dream about me and that in it I had died a hero. I remember that she wrote, “I was so glad to wake up and know that you were still in the land of the living.” Shortly after I received that letter, my world was turned upside down. It was an enormous loss that I still feel to this day. Shawne was my hero in many ways.
When your will let you go
couldn't you stay by my side?
Take me on your last ride
into the bright light
and never say goodbye?
The message came to say
you were on your last leg today
no hope or wonder;
just shame and melancholy
Did you really have to go so far away?
When I see you, you will say
that your hero couldn't stay
But we shared good times and pain
and had the same name.
Did you have to fall so far into the gray?